Ok, lets talk about bats. From what I understood at the National ASA umpire school I attended last month and if I miss understood maybe Gary will clarify but ASA mandatory approved stamp for tournament play that was to go in effect this year is not. They basically said that all softball bats that are not altered or illegal will be acceptable for all play whether or not they are stamped. It sounds like High School ball though will stick with the ASA ruling that they the bats are going to need the sticker to be legal. They mention in the school that alot of the bats with the stickers have worn off and it would not be fair to make the bat illegal just because it no longer showed the stamp.

I did a tournament last year which we had to check the bats bpf rating which had to be 130 or lower for the bat to be legal and it had to have the rating on the bat or it was removed for the rest of the tournament

I guess I was lucky but when I played SP and pitched I never took a shot directly but had many that buzzed by before could react. Did see this year 3 or 4 incidents where the pitcher did take direct shots to the head and a couple of them were carted off to the hospital.

As in everything it comes down to the almighty $$$'s but do think ASA and the other organzations should be able to get together on at least this very important point and come up with a uniform bat regulation and some restriction on the bat manufactors to try to put some safeguarding in for these pitchers. I havent done any FP but in SP when you have these 250+lb big boys swing for all their might it can get pretty ugly.

Also would like to say I dont think softer core ball are the answer, the players will never go for it and it turns into really ugly ball


Wonder what some of you experienced blues think should be done if anything?


Don

Don......

I know for my area (ASA only).....if it fits the definition of a bat......it is legal for all play (Except play that involves advancment to Nationals).

I have not heard that we will be using the "List" again this year.....however, we have not started our meetings yet.

For league play, essentially any bat is legal as long as it is not dented or cracked.

I had to buy my oldest a new bat because FED ball IS requiring the sticker.

I will also be anxious to hear ASA's official position for championship play this year. I would hope they would stick to their previous ruling.....less confusion that way.

Joel

Don,

At the national school, Henry & Walt said "don't go looking for trouble." The main emphasis would be placed on championship play. League and regular tournament play would be governed by the "if it looks like a bat...it is a bat." ASA is unofficially encouraging good umpire judgement for bat guidelines. The grandfathered bat list was to become history.

In our local UIL/FED meeting last month, we were instructed to follow the same guidelines.

If you buy a new bat via the internet, you can still get bats without the approval sticker or manufacturer's stamp. Individuals were buying the stickers and applying them to their own bats. The sticker issue just created more problems than it was designed to cure.

[Edited by ntxblue on Jan 4th, 2002 at 08:33 AM]

I just wish there was no list and no stickers. As long as the bats have no cracks, dents, burrs, loose grip or are in anyway altered, and it can pass through my bat ring, I say let 'em play. How many safety rules can ASA or NFHS build in to curtail liability? I really don't think any manufacturer makes an illegal bat on purpose.
What about a list of those that don't meet requirements? It's got to be a lot shorter than the list of the legal bats. I also think that NFHS should follow ASA. How many
folks are going to keep a sticker in tact for the life of the bat? A totally insipid rule.

Elaine,
Yup, if it looks like a bat, it's a bat - at least that's what I'm expecting to do with all local ASA play. For high school, we've still got to inspect the bats, but THEY did away with the list and the stickers this year - no permanent seal, then not usable. I'd like to see ASA follow the Fed in this case - hmmmmmmm, I think that's the first time I've ever said that.....

Too many perfectly good $150 & up bats out there for this to be done without a huge ruckus among coaches and parents.

HS teams just sock the taxpayers and buy new.

Dakota wrote:

"HS teams just sock the taxpayers and buy new."


I don't know any HS player that uses the school's bats. Club players will use their own bats for HS games. I wish that the HS would buy bats of the quality that club players use!!

I agree, just too many expensive unstamped bats out there to make the complete change.

HS teams just sock the taxpayers and buy new. [/B][/QUOTE]

You must live in a city. Out in the county (at least in my county in N.C.) school booster clubs pay for uniforms, equipment, medical supplies, and training equipment, dugouts and most other needs for sports.

I've served lots of chicken dinners, bought wheelbarrow loads of raffel tickets, served as a booster club president, and donated a batting cage to the high school that I, and my daughters, graduated from. The booster club there recently completed building a $300,000 field house without any tax money.

The only thing the school board pays for is purchasing the land for the schools, a basic gym and grading for athletic fields, fees of officials, the electric bill, activity buses, and a small supplement for head coaches. In a good budget year they might help with a partial payment for field lights.

All that being said, I agree with Steve. Everyone has known this was comming for at least 2 years. Practice with the old bats that are still good, but have legal bats ready at game time.

Roger

Dakota,

Not around here would the high schools buy any bats; it's
we parents. I don't think any umpire is so strict to check the labels until the high school play offs.

Elaine,
Here in Pa we check them every game. I am so glad not to have to carry that list this year. Funny though, I've only tossed 2 bats for not being on the list and that was a couple of years ago - but within a month, those bats were n the list. Especially after seeing a bat snap and the barrel windmill out beyond 3B last year, I'm making sure that all bats in my games are approved and are in good shape.

Welcome Lady Blue
 

Glad to see ya over here in this forum! Ok guys tell me have you seen any manufactored bats that you do considered unsafe or illegal or is it usally just the altered, crack & dented bats that cause the problems??

Don

Up here, they never saw a tax they didn't like - and I'm talking about the voters, not the politicians. Although some of the cost is paid by parents, booster clubs, and the like, the school districts provide more $$$ for athletics than the Southern school districts I am familiar with (SC and TX).

Anyway, if all the travel players have to buy new bats to play HS ball, maybe the ASA can get what they want without being the bad guys ;)

The part of the rule I like is where the umpire's judgment will determine whether the bat will pass the ASA qualification tests. I'm an engineer, and even so, I have no clue how to determine that beyond "looks like a bat."

Other than when Titanium bats were in use, I have never seen a bat that really made a difference. Those Titaniums, though, I saw scrawny gys that normally couldn't hit further than 150 ft, crushing the ball on line shots over the fence.

I like that "judgement" part on whether the old bat would have passed the standards test, too.

I've got enough bangers and judgement decisions to make, give me a black and white rule on bats - no added variables.

Steve.......funny you should mention Titanium Bats......

There is one of my daughters friends whose dad played men's FP.....4-5 years ago......we went up to Houston to watch a few games of a tournament he was playing in.......(The only men's FP here at that time was a Senior league.....and they have since moved up to Houston......anyway.....I digress...)

One of his teammates had a titanium bat that had been painted to look like a regular bat...........my daughter's friends Dad hit a rocket with it during a game......he is very athletic........but NOT very big guy.......his teammate hid the bat in his bag for the rest of the tournament.......

I have another friend who is the Slowpitch UIC for our District who claims that there are companies that will repaint bats to make them look legal.......He played SP for a number of years and swears that the sound off of a Titanium bat is different......

Joel

Joel,
Once you've heard a Titanium bat hit the ball, you'll recognize it forever - it's a very unique sound. They make every single hit a potentially lethal shot. In a men's B state championship, I saw a runner unable to avoid getting hit and it darn near killed him. A line shot that hit the left side of his face and knocked him right out. I used to hit the ball pretty hard when I played - a couple of homeruns at Three Rivers Stadium (baseball, but with a wooden bat) - anyway, I'd be afraid to use one of those bats. I was really glad when ASA outlawed them mid-season.

I understand the bpf rating that is marked on most bats is suppose to be a rating on how fast a ball comes off the bat using a .47 core ball do you know what the rating was on the titanium bats?? I did hear that a guy pitching in men's SP in Illinios(may have been Indiana) was killed this year when he was hit in the head by a batted ball.



Don

Don,
I dunno that they were marked and I never looked into what bpf rating they may have had. There was a slow ptch game this past year where those bats were used?!? That's amazing that any tournament or league would allow them.

Okay, my turn to chime in.

For all of you folks who are thinking along the lines of expense, the bat companies have been aware of the rule for 3 1/2 years, so if you think you are getting screwed by the rule, you are looking in the wrong place. Hopefully, your daughters will not be injured as a result of ASA's failure to take a stand on this issue.

Stickers "falling off" is absurd. As of last Tuesday, the grandfather clause allowing the stickers supposedly expired. However, last year the ASA wimped out and put the onus back on the umpires by allowing them to make a judgment call on the manufactured date and whether it would pass a bat performance standard test. Also, there must still be a list available as it will still be part of the conditions making a bat ASA-legal unless there were some late, yet to be published changes for 2002. Therefore, the "sticker" is irrelevent.

Obviously, this puts every umpire in jeopardy on the safety issue. The "in my judgment" debate may work on the ball field, but will easily crumble in a court of law. And if you don't think there are ballplayers out there having bats repainted to try to get an edge, you are sadly mistaken.

I loved the "why can't we use the technology available to us to win ball games" argument on this subject. The answer is simple: there is no technological advances to help protect the youth and rec players defend themselves in the field. It isn't like the standards set were that restricting. With the exception of the titanium bats and a few Demarini proto-types, almost all the bats on the market at the time ASA began testing met the standards. If anything, ASA was simply trying to draw a line to keep the bats from getting out of hand, not pull bats off the shelves.

Then the argument started concerning toning down the balls. Of course, now the ball manufacturers are raising a stink and amid all the fuss, ASA opted to NOT change the balls this year. Some believe that is because Bernie Profato was not in attendence at the convention when the subject came to the floor. I believe it is because the manufacturers complained louder than the players.

BTW, it is my belief that while the new compression and COR requirements may keep the ball from travelling as far as before, it has very little effect on the first 90' the ball travels which is where the danger is regardless of what ball is used with some of these bats.

Even some of the Super players, Carl Rose in particular, are showing concern that the equipment is getting out of hand. Two years ago, Carl rearranged the face of a pitcher at the ASA Super NCs in Sanford, Fl. Now, this is a pitcher who is aware of the danger and he could not protect himself. So, how do you think the youth or rec player is going to handle that line shot coming off an equally souped-up piece of equipment?

I believe it is time to bring the game back inside the fences and see who are the real talented players.

Let them use wood.

JMHO,

Mike

Rare as this may sound, you won't get an argument out of me on that one, Mike!

Scott

Mike........in a women's game a few years ago..........I was PU and a the batter (a 21 yo perfect physical specimen).........drove a shot straight back up the middle that almost took the head off of F1........to this day, I don't know how she got her glove up in time.......this ball knocked F1 off her feet.

I personally think this particular batter could have drilled one with a piece of pipe though.........

One thing did come out of it........the F1 that got knocked down was a board member of the league.......and they switched pitching distance to 43'........


Joel

[Edited by Gulf Coast Blue on Jan 6th, 2002 at 05:53 AM]

I've said for years that I'd like to see a game with wood bats and punky balls so we could see who realy knew how to play. I used a wooden bat for a good bit of the time I played. There's nothing quite like the sound of a well hit ball off a wood bat. Technology has changed the game into a gorilla match a lot of the time.

This is a difficult discussion for me to engage, since I call only ASA JO, including a lot of league and rec level ball.

I suspect there is a big difference between adult players and 16U and under on this topic.

Most of the complaining I have heard has not been about the safety issue per se, but it has been about making bats illegal when the identical bat with the stamp is legal. Parents don't want to spend the extra money for a stamp. They would spend the money if they truly thought it was a safety issue. But to retire a perfectly good Louisville 555 (or whatever) just to buy another one with a stamp is a tough sell.

As an umpire, I don't like the ASA wimping out on following through by defining it as umpire judgment. After all, the only way I can tell if the bat is legal is by what is stamped or painted on the bat.

Don't most parents or players buy a new bat every other year, if not more frequently. It sure seems like they do onc they reach high school age. It college, most schools have something going with bat makers, so they've rarely got an old bat - NCAA doesn't accept ASA's bat rule anyway. The few slow pitch games I do, it sure seems like an awful lot of new bats are used - so I don't see a real impact with them, either. The only group that doesn't seem to replace all or most of their bats every year are the B & C levels of adult fast pitch - A & Major usually have god enough sponsors that they get new bats every year. Anyway, the point of this rambling is that I think we'll see parents and/or players get the new bats but the maximum impact will be the expense of the bat ONE YEAR earlier than they would have without the rule.

I should think so with that kind of sponsorship! :D

Seriously, your point is a good one, but that doesn't keep people from complaining.

And don't forget, there are a lot of B & lower level JO teams out there who have players with their own bats, but who don't replace them every other year.

I don't know about that Steve. My daughter, and most of her teammates played 4 years of high school ball and ASA tournaments every other weekend for that same 4 years, and nearly all of them had the same bat the whole time. That's a hell of a lot of mileage on a bat when you figure the number of times they made contact with the ball during all that playing. So I can understand the reluctance of these ballplayers parents to kick out another $200-400 for a new bat if they just purchased that same bat in the last year or two.

Scott

Dakota,

It's funny you should mention Louisville. H&B (Louisville Slugger) was one of the companies found to be intentionally holding back on having their old models tested, and sat back an blamed ASA for making the players buy new ones.

That was one of the reasons ASA backed off to the pre-1995 rule.

Also, I feel no sorrow for ANYONE who is stupid enough to spend $200-400 on a softball bat. Just another method of buying skill instead of developing it.

Well Mike,

I don't know about the intelligence level involved in the bat buying at that price. Often it is a case of what the player wants and feels comfortable with. My daughter, fortunately, felt comfortable with a $90 Louisville bat. But that is not always the case with teenagers. Also, for someone that has the limited income that I have, I damn sure wouldn't have wanted to pay even that price every other year if the bat is still in excellent condition.

Scott

I have spent as much as $125 for a bat and have seen fast pitch bats as high as $175........

Just got one of my daughters one of the new 2002 Connexion 777's for less than $95.........saw it sold for as high as $139......

Most of the super high-priced bats I have seen have been Slow Pitch bats.........

Joel

Yep....they got $500 dollar bat, $125 dollar pair shoes
and want to stand there and walk...or argue about a ball/
strike. :rolleyes:,

glen

Yep....they got $500 dollar bat, $125 dollar pair shoes
and want to stand there and walk...or argue about a ball/
strike. :rolleyes:,

glen [/B][/QUOTE]

When I was at school at <b>The University</b> (<b>The</b> University of Texas)........we had a pretty good slow pitch softball team..........(My Senior Year, we came in 2nd in intramural)......<I>including the Law School</I>.......

Each year we each kicked in $3 bucks for equipment............I remember a <b>HUGE</b> argument regarding spending $18 for an aluminum Bomb-bat.........this bat would be considered archaic by today’s standards........

I swung my 33" Johnny Bench wood BB bat..............lol

Joel

<b>Steve,</b>

I loved the wooden <i>"bottle-bat"</i>. You had great control with
it and as you said, "there was nothing like the sound of a
ball hit off a wooden bat. I like to bring it behind my
back for a fast bunt [or attempt anyway [grin].

glen

What many players don't understand, whether a teenager or adult, is that if you can't hit with a $25 bat, you probably can't hit with a $200.

Will it go faster and farther? Possibly, but you still need to make good contact with the ball and the price of the bat isn't going to help in that catagory.

I, too, am angry at ASA for whimping out because I know too many ASA umpires that won't check bats unless they're told to do so and usually it's a tournament. If I have any doubt
about any bat, I'm tossing it out. But, it would have been
nice if ASA had the rules down in black and white for coaches like Corey.
Of all the bats I've ever seen, slowpitch or fastpitch, the
absolute worst bat has got to be the purple Demarini for fastpitch. I don't know the model #, but it was their only
purple bat. It would crack all around the end within 6 months of using it and could get really bad flat spots when
hitting under 50 degrees. I must have tossed out a couple of dozen or so over the years.
I'm glad that my daughter likes her Michelle Smith bat that
I got for $89 about 3 years ago.